Decision models in supplier selection and an application study

In today?s competitive global economy, companies are trying to find new solutions in order to maintain competitive structure. Competitive pressures have promoted supply chain management as a key aspect that companies have to take into account for the implementation of their business strategies. When managing supply chain of a company, determining the most appropriate suppliers is an important problem to deal with. The supplier selection is a multi-criteria problem which includes both qualitative and quantitative criteria some of which can conflict with each other. The aim of the supplier selection problem is to determine the appropriate suppliers that can meet companies? requirements. This study focuses on supplier selection which is one of the important decision area in the supply chain. The aim of the study is two fold. First is to apply analytic hiearchy process, quality function deployment and goal programming in supplier selection problem and then compare the solutions. Second aim is to point out how the supplier selection process varying in case of using different product groups. In the last part of the study, we put a case study into practice in the automotive industry in order to test our models.